It can be appreciated that swim fins have been around for many years. Swim fins are typically designed to increase the swimmers mobility and speed in the water while decreasing the amount of energy the swimmers need to exert in the water. Various designs of swim fins exist in the market today such as U.S. Pat. No. 6,979,241 to Hull, U.S. Pat. No. 5,387,145 to Wagner (all hereby incorporated by reference) and are intended for the user to wear each swim fin on each individual foot. Although these previous swim fins may address the needs listed above, they are typically limited in the fact that are primarily directed to swimming techniques and style that involve typical independent movement or kicking of both feet when swimming. However, there are a variety of swim styles that require swim kicks that involve both feet to act in concert with each other. For example, a dolphin kick is a common swimming kick used mainly by swimmers using the butterfly swimming style in which the legs are extended straight back and moved up and down in unison with a slight bend in the knees on the downward movement. To maximize the efficiency, speed and power of such swimming techniques as the dolphin kick, the ability to keep both feet as close as possible and having them function in unison is vital to the success of swimming forms such as the butterfly. However, swimmers using the previously known swim fins often find great difficulty in successfully performing such unison-style swim kicks, such as a dolphin kick, because of the tendency of the independent swim fins to separate during kicking and thus leading to less control, decreasing speed, efficiency and power.
While these devices may be suitable for the particular purpose to which they address, they are not suitable for incorporating the advantages of a swimming aid device which comprises a convertible bi/mono swim fin, which can be used as traditional independent swim fins or combined together to form a bi-swim fin in which both swim fins are held together to aid the swimmer in performing feet unison-style swim kicks such as a dolphin kick.
In these respects, the swimming aid device according to the present invention substantially departs from the conventional concepts and designs of the prior art, and in so doing provides a storage system that is not anticipated, rendered obvious, suggested, or even implied by any of the prior art storage systems either alone or in combination thereof.